Improving Indonesia’s Cybersecurity

James Van Zorge
James Van Zorge, is a Business consultant in Indonesia that has worked for the Harvard Institute for International Development, Food and Agriculture Organization, McKinsey & Co., and A.T.Kearney’s Global Business Policy Institute. He completed his BA in International Relations, summacum laude, at the State University of New York at Albany, and he holds a Masters of Public Policy, International Economics, from the Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University.

Jakarta, IO – The passage of the Data Privacy Law by the Indonesian House of Representatives, or DPR, is only the first step towards improving the nation’s cybersecurity capabilities. 

Much remains to be done. Although Indonesia now ranks in the second quartile of countries surveyed in the Global Cybersecurity Index, or GCI, the recent spate of cyberattacks by Bjorka has exposed Indonesia’s true vulnerabilities. 

Unfortunately this is not the first time a wide-scale cyber-intrusion has occurred. Several years ago, before the onset of the pandemic, Java experienced a series of blackouts. PLN officials tried to explain the incident as a result of technical failures. Yet research by a foreign team of cybersecurity experts suggested that something more sinister was in play, namely a nation-state actor that had used its cyber-army to breach PLN’s IT ecosystem and shut down its power grid which, in the end, affected millions of households.